my very own Pithivier, circa April, 2011 ICE Culinary W 23rd St.
Yesterday morning as I sat down to write, I knew exactly where I was going. I began to write about the cake of the week, the Galette des Rois. Even though it is traditional for this cake to begin to appear in France in Decembre and carry forward throughout Janvier, it tends to be eclipsed by a myriad of other seasonal treats and customs. Later, around 6 Janvier, it will then settle itself into the spotlight, in celebration of Epiphany – the day that the Three Kings were to have arrived to pay homage to the baby, Jesus.
I was first introduced to one iteration of this “pastry item”(notice my intended vagueness) when I was in Pastry school, at ICE in 2011. It was called the Pithivier or, as seen in Larousse, the Pithiviers. This one particular item in our long agenda turned out to be my very favorite and, I have to say, most of it was polished off before the day was done – something I can’t say about any other single item we made. That it has become an object of my swooning affection every time I see one or am lucky enough to have a slice served to me, is no surprise. Every year at this time now, I become quite fixated. There’d be little question then that the story of the Galette des Rois is one that I have been fascinated with for a long while now.
Yesterday, I wrote and I researched around for about 2 hours under the assumption that the Galette de Rois and the Pithivier were, for all intents and purposes, the same thing. Perhaps most people believe this to be the case. It wasn’t long before then, that I first became hung up on the previously unforeseen or misunderstood issues concerning this particular Galette. Once I ventured in, the intrigue and webs of the story drew me in completely – into the swirl of intrigue that exists well beyond the pastry world, into the tangled stories of European history, culture and even politics. Some quandaries pertained to form and filling, those differing somewhat depending upon the region in France and your opinion on the appropriate ingredients for your filling choice. The plot then thickened, as they say in the trade and, I became stuck, among various and sundry definitional, timeline and political issues, and, in and around the more practical – the use of pastry cream to lighten the frangipane – and well, my time ran out. This is where I became further drawn in and highjacked at the very same time. How do you say, “can of worms” in French? This detail became just one needle in a haystack.
In conjunction here, can we agree that in America, we seem to become rather obsessed with elevating the latest iteration of certain legendary characters in literature, history and culture – as well as forms of this “cake” to previously unforeseen levels of celebration? Right about now, we are indeed obsessed with the current sensation of Benedict Cumberbatch’s role as Sherlock Holmes. The media here is flooded with his portrayal of the detective and this stuck with me. Hmmm, I wondered aloud, could, should, I become the Sherlock Holmes of pastry? Wasn’t I, at least informally, playing this role now and then, albeit informally, here and there anyway as I go about seeking, ogling and eating some of the most famous pastries in history for my own benefit? Aside from my own personal delusions here, my mind wondered if indeed the likes of Sherlock Holmes could definitively unravel, once and for all, the true story and proper delineation of the Galette des Rois, the Pithivier and the King’s Cake.
As far as I’m concerned, French as well as many other European pastry specialties that have evolved and survived down through the centuries have a storied past about as deliciously-intriguing as the items themselves. Often, if you look into their stories, their origins are fought over between present day cultural boundaries and legal borders. The Italians, French, Swiss and Austrians, to name a few, often have conflicting accounts as to who made what and where and when. The stories of particular pastries down through the ages are as filled with intrigue and often as astutely defended as the very own ancestries of their makers. Haven’t there already been scores of people like me curious and obsessed enough to dedicate their time and energy to their stories? I wanted to know……… For me, this is all downright sleuth worthy!
Before long on Monday, I had to abandon my typewriter (sic) and go on with my day. I realized, when I saw the gorgeous offerings of my pseudo-local wonderful patissier, Pastry Chef Matthew of The Flaky Tart, my ribbon winner for best Pastry Shop in NJ, that we of pastry obsession were already all on the same page this week. He, however, was well ahead of me as he had already produced a collection of mouth-watering proportions. Even as my first impulse would involve my heart sinking a bit, because he’d already been to the ovens before I got my rambles out on paper, I realized once again how the community of passionate bakers the world over is indeed on the exact same uber-connected wavelength at very specific times of the year. We all may be of different locales, cultures and degrees of proficiency, I being in the babbling novice and major league ogler category, but we all awake with the very same impulse, to dream and to bake.
Before I go off digressing here into a myriad of cobwebbed topics, let me re-focus the lens. There are many pastry items that are legendary around certain days of the year. In my extremely limited present-tense view-finder, most all of them originate in Europe. The Galette des Rois is said to have originated in 14th Century France. This is where I began to go off the tracks yesterday. The questions formed and hung in the air there as I went onward.
Let me just backtrack a tiny bit here. As I start this year, I have tried to focus on what I would indeed love to have as my own rest-of-life job. Mine, I centered on yesterday, more of a goal per se, would be this: to eat, walk and eat. More specifically, in this particular chapter, I would awake each morning in Paris, and eat, walk and eat my way through the patisseries of Paris, sampling each and every Galette des Rois, and walk off all the calories, for a net caloric accumulation for the day of zero, or preferably, less than zero! Now, wouldn’t that just be the absolute best way to live? I imagine myself, beginning in Janvier, and trundling through the years in ever-widening circles, until I have traipsed and covered all of France, stopping in here and there to all the hubs of pastry in hill and dale and greeting the most proficient of all chefs and home bakers alike and greeting them, tasting their offerings, snapping a few photos with each and every, and happily being on my way. There now, you can see the ample degree of my most joyous delusion. Only it is not delusion.
So, back to my detours from yesterday. As we all know, in America this particular “cake” has, in addition to surfacing now, been linked to the next big Catholic season of pre-Lent, and somehow modified, if you will, to include various and sundry awkwardly over-abundant sprinklings of colored sugars, and surfaced in the form of “The King’s Cake” which seems to inhabit our southern states, and most obviously, the New Orleans area. I’m going to mention this but not go there in an effort to dissuade myself from allowing my disfavor to come into the story.
If you haven’t yet stumbled upon my basic predicament, it is to clarify, if only in my own mind, the relationship between the Galette des Rois, the Pithivier an the King’s Cake. It is said, in the records I found, that the Galette des Rois originated in the 14th Century and has been the centerpiece of the celebration of Epiphany in France ever since. But, there are, vagaries here that steam up the mirror, so to speak. From there, the stories become fast and furious, incorporating a formalized battle between “bakers” and pastry chefs, the government becoming involved in a well documented delineation of professional barriers here, and a regional iteration in all corners of France. They involve arguments about the cake’s actual form, the nature of the outer covering and the design of the galette. The fillings can be argued over as well.
In the vein of becoming one of many creations that signify a date and time in history and perhaps with sweetness in steep inverse proportion to the amount of sunlight available at this time of year, the Galette des Rois was apparently born. Many traditions have grown up around the cake in France, the most central of which involves hiding an object, the range being from humblest, a fava bean, all the way to, in the case of Limoges, a porcelain figurine for the lucky recipient to find and be allowed to assume various roles in the household, one of which would be the role of King or Queen for a day. Is there no end to the degree of ingenuity known to be created for purposes of celebration in the darkest days of the year? This is a trend throughout history that I continue to point my Sherlock Holmesian eye toward, in a never-ending fascination with how peoples cope with the Seasons. Anthropologists take note.
Anyway, I have digressed a bit here. Yesterday as I read around, and given to my usual inclination, began to pull down from my shelves more than a few of my bibles on French pastry for yet more versions of the story, I uncovered not only iterations on the form of the pastry, depending on the region of France, but at least one frank claim on the difference between the Pithivier and the Galettes des Rois. This was found as a comment on a site called Joe Pastry, where the commenter claimed in certainty:
Bruno Millerioux says: (comment courtesy Joe Pastry)
01/06/14 at 10:58 pm
“There is a major diffeerence between a galette des rois and a Pithiviers: the difference is in the filling. In a galette des rois, it’s frangipane, a type of custard made of butter, eggs, sugar and almond flour. In a Pithiviers, it’s an almond cream, the same preparation used in pear tarts “Bourdaloue”. They are both ancient, dating back to the 17th century, when puff pastry was discovered, although the Pithiviers predates the galette des rois. So, they are close, but not the same.”
Well, this is where all went amuck, as I searched and searched around for some, any, verification of this opinion – that of lightening the frangipane with pastry cream in the Pithivier. This is where I ran out of time in the search. So, anyone out there who cares to add to the story here, please do.
Most authorities that I stumbled upon in today’s written opinions seem to coalesce, most generally speaking, around the incorporation of a basic frangipane inside of a scallop-edged puff pastry encasement, which will then be topped, in France especially, with a gilded crown. Fitting and gorgeous. I’m such a sucker for a pastry with expanding walls of butter-and-steam-puffed crispiness. I will pause the discussion here. Since puff pastry wasn’t “invented” until more like the 17th century, I am not clear on the exact evolution of this encasement part. Perhaps earlier versions were the more common lard-based pastries. And, here again is where my inner “mercurial” as some say he was, Sherlock Holmes will forever become drawn into the story. There seemed to continue to be, even as I have not enumerated them clearly here, questions of time, place, construction, name, origin, and fillings – each of which have their own long list of un-agreed-upon distinctions.
Today, in frustration and confusion, I finally pulled out my copy of Larousse, where, I felt certain, I’d find the authoritative definitions. Under the term Galette, I found the following elaboration which, you will see, further confuses, at least in my mind, the identity of cake, brioche and the galette:
“Galette: A flat, round cake of variable size. The galette probably dates from the Neolithic era, when thick cereal pastes were cooked by spreading them out on hot stones. In ancient times people made galettes from oats, wheat, rye and even barley, sweetened with honey. Then came the hearth cakes of the Middle Ages and all the regional varieties: the galette of Correze, made with walnuts and chestnuts; the galette of Roussillon, made with crystallized (candied) fruits; the marzipan galette of the Nivernais; the curd cheese galette of the Jura; the puff pastry galette of Normandy, filled with jam and fresh cream; the famous galette of Perugia, a delicate yeasted pastry, like brioche, flavoured with lemon rind (zest) and topped with butter and sugar; and, of course, the traditional puff pastry Twelfth Night cake (galette des Rois or gateaux des Rois). Galettes are not always sweet. In rural France galettes are traditionally made with potatoes (finely sliced or puréed) or with cereals (maize, millet, oats).” (all courtesy Larousse Gastronomique circa 2001)
To which I add the following definition from Larousse, of Pithivier, where we add into the description, the term, tart:
“A large, round, puff-pastry tart with scalloped edges, filled with almond cream. A specialty of Pithiviers, in the Orleans region, it traditionally serves as a Twelfth Night cake, when it contains a broad (fava) bean. The town of Pithiviers is also renowned for another cake, again made of puff pastry, but filled with crystalized (candied) fruit and covered with white fondant icing (frosting). The classic Pithiviers has been interpreted in various ways, the almond cream being replaced with such fillings as creamed rice, kidneys and even chicken liver in a sauce.”
Ok…………. so here I’d be forced to try to deduce that the Pithivier is a form of Galette de Rois that became famous perhaps in Orleans, seems concerned with the shape and scalloped edges, but may not be limited to this filling or origin. Oui?
Now, you will notice that the terms cake, galettes, gateaux and brioche and tart have all been used in these two definitions, of a galette and a pitihivier, further confusing and blurring the dividing lines, at least in my cobwebbed head, should there be any of exact nature in the worlds of breads and pastry. I then went to look up cakes in Larousse – this is all way too circuitous for me. This is where I threw up my hands. And so, the role of Sherlock, in whichever genre you should choose, continues.
For most lucky people who are able to concern themselves with only the eating part of the story of this cake, galette, tart, or whatever it really is, in its current presentation, a wonderfully satisfying place to be, the order, form, filling and factual evolution are of little concern. That may in fact be a wise place to reside. But, I will continue to let my mind wander, as it is known to do, around the darkest corners of the earliest bakers of France, where my fascination seems to have its origin.
I may, out of practicality, have to only wander around the city of New York this month and try to find some acceptable samplings of the Galette des Rois. I may bake a few of my own in my own kitchen, using pre-fab puff pastry – the kind you buy in your local supermarket. While, I will have to today admit, I am an American more than I’d like to say, I won’t succumb to the green and purple sprinkles version. I am going to stay with my backward glancing, over the pond and back to the traditions born in France, however foggy they may remain. And, therein, I shall practice my scalloping with a sharp-edged razor or pairing knife.
I leave you today feeling the sinking heart of a failure. For sure, I’d receive an F in the cause of shedding any definitive clarity onto the subject here, for those of you who may care. As such, as I may have been known to do after I have combed and combed around for answers to many of life’s questions, I will succumb, I will return to the rather simpleton’s approach to the endeavor at hand, and: eat, walk, eat……….
Stay tuned.